"Using notes I have taken, not as a story outline which would limit and constrain me, but usually of character of. servations, or pertinent descriptions of certain settings of the story I have devised in my imagination, I find that the story comes to me in a straight line. I am convinced that the sub. conscious does the really difficult work. I sit down with a fountain pen and unlined paper and the story pours out, However lousy a section is I let it go. I write on to the end.
Then the subconscious mind has done what it can; what is to be created is there. And the rest--the rest is simply effort.
You may go over and over, polishing, rewriting the lousy parts, sometimes rewriting a page for the whole day, going over a chapter time and time again, until, though you know it isn't right, it is the best you can do. But that is the labor of the conscious mind, the effort of a craftsman. It is the first draft, the creative draft, that is basic."
On the turntable: Calexico, "Feast of Wire"
